February 13, 2018

I went on a very quick trip to New York three weekends ago. It was freezing cold and beautiful on the first few days, with icy blue skies and blinding sunshine. I've now been in Berlin for almost as long as I lived in New York, which feels very odd indeed, especially because this time I stayed on the Upper West Side, the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to the city. It has changed so much and yet I still recognized the oddest little things, like the cornices on a particular building, the way Zabar's smells, that one lamp store on 79th Street... But now the old neighborhood also has fancy new condo buildings, a Barneys, for crying out loud, and Citarella sells yogurt for 6 dollars a jar. And I still miss H&H.

Sigh.

Sometimes I really miss New York's fabulousness, like with this amazing older couple's outfit game on this random 6 train ride.

Anyway! I thought I'd do one of those very old-school blog roundups of the best places I went to while I was in town, just in case one of you is planning a trip soon and is wondering where to go. It has gotten difficult to have even one bad meal in New York, which is both thrilling and a little intimidating when planning a trip. My friends and I didn't plan a single meal in advance, so we were a little restricted to the places where we could get reservations at relatively normal dining hours. I didn't end up getting to try as many new places as I'd hoped. (Paowalla, abcv, and Le Coucou come to mind...) Still, it was a pretty delicious weekend. The places that really stood out were:

Irving Farm Coffee Roasters is a city-wide chain in the meantime, but there was one around the corner from where we stayed and it was a very nice place to get a cup of coffee or tea in the early morning, plus they have both cooked breakfasts and good pastries (like croissants from Bien Cuit), and a nice selection of simple but hearty lunch options. Whoever is "curating" their array of baked goods knows her/his stuff. And despite the fact that it has locations all over the city, it felt very local and cozy.

I'm lucky enough to have an agent who takes me to lunch at abc Kitchen every time I'm in town, but if I didn't, I would still make time to have some kind of meal here - it's just such a nice place and the food is great - organic, local, etc, but especially just very well made. It's ground zero for things like roasted butternut squash on toast, roasted beets with yogurt, and carrot and avocado salad. Funnily enough, though the menu is pretty big, I only ever end up ordering some variation on the same five things. This time around, we ordered one crab toast appetizer to share...and then ordered another one about 15 minutes later because it was just so good. Their house-made non-alcoholic drinks are noteworthy and also their general attention to detail. To wit: The host (I think?) must have overheard my agent wishing me a belated birthday when we saw each other, because after our lunch was over, they brought out a mini cupcake for me with a candle in it. Such a little thing, but SO NICE. (The restaurant is located inside the insane and cavernous abc home store, which makes for fun aspirational browsing either before or after lunch.)

Prune. Prune! Need I say anything at all about this place? (Fun trivia fact - it's the subject of my third post on this creaky old thing!) I'm actually kind of surprised that we ended up here, but one of my girlfriends had a hankering for it and we were lucky enough to get a reservation at a normal hour, so that's where we went. It was, unsurprisingly, excellent in every way. There was gorgeous sparkling Cabernet, radishes with delicious cultured butter and crunchy salt, meltingly rich lamb sweetbreads, mussel stew in which every. single. mussel was sweet and perfect. For my vegetarian friend, they made a special off-menu selection of their vegetable sides and some items from the appetizers. And for dessert, though I wasn't even hungry any more!, there was a crème brûlée that should be taught in cooking school. Aces from start to finish.

A craving for dim sum led us to Dim Sum VIP on Mott Street, which was tiny and crowded, but a fantastic find (we were lucky enough to snag a table at peak lunch hour without a wait). It's too small for dim sum carts and they do everything to order, so you just look at the menu, then fill out an order sheet that's on your table. The food comes out fresh and piping hot, in rapid-fire succession - turnip cakes, red oil wontons, bean curd skin rolls (two orders!), shrimp rice rolls and an enormous plate of sautéed gai lan. Still thinking about those gorgeous greens.

Hipster ramen has become almost a cliché (almost?), and if you have never been to Momofuku before, that's where you should have some, but Ippudo is pretty great, too, and much bigger and warmer and more comfortable. We had the nicest server, the cucumber appetizer is icy-cold and crunchy and savory and wonderful, and the spicy karaka ramen sustained us nearly the whole day.

My favorite find of the trip was the Thai restaurant Fish Cheeks on Bond Street. I had read about it in the New Yorker and filed it away in my mind, then we stumbled upon while out walking one day and ending up going in and reserving a table for the next evening. It's a fun, boisterous, colorful place and the food is wonderful. Unlike many Thai restaurants that have enormous menus, this place has a pretty small selection, but it's very well-considered and offers a great balance of family-style dishes. The best appetizers we tried were the fiery zabb wings and the cooling, wonderful yum sum-o salad. We liked the crab curry and the seafood pad cha, but the main dish that ended up truly shining was...the crab fried rice, believe it or not. It looked sort of pale and quiet next to the bombastic other mains, but it was excellent, really beautifully flavored and lovely.

February 06, 2018

First off, an apology. Writing about Thanksgiving in February is...well...not great. But I swear I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't have a very good reason and that reason is this recipe for roasted turkey stock, which is worth every single droplet of sweat, blood and tears you expend on Thanksgiving itself to make the feast. Every time I open my freezer and see the remaining turkey stock I made in November, I feel like I have money in the bank. And there's no reason to restrict the recipe below to turkey - it works just as well with a small collection of roast chicken carcasses.

The recipe comes from Suzanne Goin and is a study in the art of how to build flavor. You start out, of course, with a roasted turkey carcass (first layer). This gets returned to the oven the day after Thanksgiving to roast until it sizzles and is fragrant (second layer). Then you roast vegetables and aromatics in the turkey drippings (third layer). You add a pretty large amount of wine to the roasted vegetables and then reduce that wine until it's syrupy (layer four). At that point, it's time to add water and the seasonings and to simmer the stock until it's rich and flavorful (layer five!).

What results is a golden brown liquid that tastes absolutely amazing, both on its own or in things like risotto or other soups. But the very best thing you can do with it (besides freezing it and being delighted by it every single time you open the freezer, if you're like me) is to make turkey pho. Follow this fantastic recipe by Samin Nosrat, which adds even more flavor to your amazing stock by simmering it with charred ginger, onions and star anise - and copious amounts of fish sauce. Not to mention the fresh limes and bean sprouts and jalapeños and mint and cilantro...

Of course you don't have to wait until next Thanksgiving to try this out - the next two times (approximately, if you're using a 4-5 pound chicken) you roast a chicken, throw the carcass in the freezer. The third time, remove the frozen carcasses and add to the fresh carcass, then depart with the recipe below.

1 leftover carcass from a 10- to 15-pound roasted turkey, preferably including neck, wing and leg bones4 or 5 onions, peeled and quartered 2 large or 3 small carrots, peeled and cut into chunks4 large or 5 small celery ribs, cut into chunks2 cups white wine2 large or 3 small garlic cloves, smashed and peeled4 sprigs fresh thyme2 bay leaves1 teaspoon black peppercorns1 whole arbol (or another small dried red) chileKosher salt

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Using a sturdy knife or your hands, cut or tear turkey carcass into large pieces. Arrange in a single layer in a roasting pan and roast until brown and sizzling, 20 to 25 minutes.

2. Remove from oven and transfer pieces to a stockpot. Add onions, carrots and celery to the empty roasting pan and place over medium heat. Sauté briefly, just to loosen the crusty turkey bits from bottom of pan. Return pan to oven and cook until vegetables are browned around the edges, 20 to 25 minutes.

3. Remove pan from oven and place it over medium heat. Add white wine and cook, stirring, until wine is reduced to a syrup, about 3 minutes. Add wine-vegetable mixture to stockpot. Add garlic, thyme, bay leaves, black peppercorns and chile. Add 6 quarts water and place over medium-high heat just until mixture comes to a boil.

4. Immediately reduce heat to low, skim any foam floating on top and simmer, skimming as needed, for 3 hours. Add 1 teaspoon salt and taste. If stock tastes watery, keep simmering until stock is flavorful. Taste for salt again and add more if needed.

5. Strain stock through a sieve into a large container or containers. Discard solids. Let stock cool slightly, then refrigerate. Skim off any fat from the top of the stock. Use within 4 days or freeze.

January 22, 2018

Last fall, for the first time ever, I hosted Thanksgiving at my place. Max was traveling overseas at the time, so I hosted it solo to boot. Wah! There were 15 of us and although my guests (Joanie and her whole crew) brought plenty of delicious side dishes and some dessert, the big things - turkey! stuffing! gravy! pies! mashed potatoes! green beans! uh, cranberry sauce! - were on me. It wasn't the first time I'd done a full Thanksgiving dinner - I cooked one for 40 people at Soho House a few years ago - but that was in a professional kitchen with two sous chefs to help. Also, perhaps most importantly, I was being paid to do so. It was still one of my most insane days in the kitchen, except for that one time when we had to reshoot 11 of the Classic German Baking photos. In one day. While I had the flu.

In other words, I know from stressful kitchen days. So on Thanksgiving, I outsourced my children to my sainted parents, blasted The War on Drugs (excellent getting-shit-done tunes, among other things), put my head down and just did it. And, wow, is it different to be the Thanksgiving cook in your own home than it is to just show up with a few side dishes and a pie in hand, my usual role.

(A million seasoned home cooks roll their eyes and yawn, while mouthing ya think, genius?)

I learned so much. Like to err on the side of having a too-big turkey, rather than a too-small one (insert chagrined emoji face here). That baking an apple pie for close to two hours really is revelatory. To stay away from, how should I call them, newfangled variations on cranberry sauce. And that you can't have too many mashed potatoes, as long as you know about this way to use them up: Aloo Tikki, also known as Indian Potato Cakes, also known as my favorite kitchen discovery of 2017.

On Thanksgiving, propelled by some hard-to-articulate terror that we wouldn't have enough food, I made - hold tight - almost 9 pounds of mashed potatoes. After our feasting, this is what I was left with:

Woah.

I couldn't figure out where to begin re-purposing what looked like about 5 pounds of leftover mashed potatoes. So I took to Instagram to ask for help, and almost 200 comments rolled in with ideas. I mean, people, the wealth of inspiration! It was incredible. (It's here, but warning: don't click on that if you're hungry and not in possession of an obscene amount of leftover mashed potatoes.)

The thing that most tickled my fancy was the idea of combining fresh, hot Indian flavors with the potatoes. Not only did it sound delicious but I was pretty sure it was going to be the best way to get excited about working through leftovers after that first obligatory meal of Thanksgiving leftovers (you know, pretty great the first time, pretty heinous the fifth). Also, they seemed dead easy and if you know anything about me at this point, you know that I will always, ALWAYS choose the easiest way.

So. Aloo tikki. You take a whole bunch of leftover mashed potatoes. You mix in some chopped red pepper and scallions, some cumin, coriander and turmeric, and an egg and flour for binding. Then you make little cakes out of the mixture. Fry them in oil. Whisk up an yogurt sauce (NON-NEGOTIABLE, DO NOT SKIP, PRACTICALLY THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS WHOLE POST). Serve them together and watch your mashed potatoes disappear faster than the speed of light. Magic!

Now a quick word of caution. I do not know authentic this recipe is. I found it on Genius Kitchen, which is the new home of the old Food.com. Some cursory searches online turned up other recipes for Aloo Tikki that certainly sound even better - with fresh ginger and garam masala and peas (PEAS!). But let me put it like this: this basic recipe already was the greatest thing I made all year, perhaps precisely because it was such a cinch. So don't let it stop you and then make the ones with peas (wherein the journalist calls aloo tikki Pakistan and India's greatest street food I REST MY CASE) and report back. Deal?

1. Place the mashed potatoes in a mixing bowl. Add the red pepper, scallions, egg, flour, and spices. Mix well, then set the mixture aside for 10 minutes.

2. In the meantime, make the yogurt sauce: Place the yogurt in a medium bowl. Whisk in the lime juice, oil, cilantro, jalapeño and salt to taste. Set aside.

3. Put 1 tablespoon oil in a large skillet (preferably non-stick) and heat over medium heat. Form as many 2-3 inch patties as you can fit in the skillet and gently put them in the hot skillet. Fry each side until golden-brown, remove to a plate and repeat with the remaining potato mixture (adding more oil to the pan if necessary). You can keep the cakes warm in a 200 F/95 C oven. Serve hot with the yogurt sauce.

January 18, 2018

How's that for sidling back here after 6 months of radio silence? Smooth, right?

So here's where I've been...right here! Trying to get my kid to practice the piano. Making sure Bruno doesn't electrocute himself since he has a predilection for sucking on electrical cables plugged into sockets. Up to my eyeballs in baby life and parental leave - Max took two months off this summer so we hightailed it to my mother in Italy - and schoolkid life, because Hugo started school in September. It's been very busy and satisfying and all-encompassing and wonderful. And Bruno is the sweetest little angel baby, all smiles and soft skin and cuddles. Having him around just feels so good. Next week he turns one and I am totally gutted. Time rolls on and breaks our hearts...

Also practicing the piano!

But you are here for recipes, not for a mother bellyaching about her baby growing up, so let me tell you about this most wondrous discovery I made all the way back in October (but is still going strong in January, locked up in a nice, airtight jar in my pantry): Alison Roman's savory granola, found in the pages of her first cookbook, Dining In (currently, everyone is all in on her chocolate chunk shortbread recipe, which, it being January, just makes me so happy. Piss off, green smoothie cult!).

Try as I might, regular granola, no matter how many seeds or how much olive oil gets thrown in there, just isn't my thing. It's too sweet for breakfast, too rich to start the day. I want to like it and God knows there are enough enticing recipes online to satisfy almost every single person on this planet, and yet it's just...not what I want to eat. Savory granola, though, is a whole other barrel of fish. Salty, spicy and kind of weird, it's kind of brilliant. Alison packs her recipe full of fennel seeds and Aleppo pepper and nigella seeds (kalonji, my favorite word!) and soy sauce and buckwheat groats, for crying out loud. It's nutty and spicy and crunchy, keeps for far longer than the recipe indicates, and tastes fantastic when layered as follows:

Chopped cherry tomatoes and peeled cucumbers, well-salted and generously soaked in really good olive oil; super-creamy plain yogurt (full-fat is the only way to go, folks, but not Greek, at least not for me), then some generous handfuls of savory granola. You want the tomato-cuke juices to pool at the bottom of the bowl with the olive oil, so that each bite is sort of saucy, creamy, and crunchy at the same time. Err on the side of more olive oil in this breakfast bowl, not less.

And for the umpteenth time, let us all give thanks that botanists developed cherry tomatoes to be delicious at all times of the year so that this nice little breakfast can also be enjoyed in the depths of winter. Thank you, science!

The awful thing about not blogging for so long, besides making me feel wracked with guilt and weirdly lazy, is that it makes it extra hard to get back into the saddle again. But I have missed you all very much and I just wanted to say thanks to all those who kept checking in and welcome to all those who found their way here while I was off changing diapers and sleep-training. You're all great. Can't wait to fire this place up again this year.

3. Spread the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet and bake, stirring every 15 minutes or so, until everything is golden brown and toasty, 45 to 55 minutes. Let cool completely and break any large clumps into smaller pieces before storing in glass jars or ziplock bags. Will keep for at least a month.

June 16, 2017

Aaaaaand, it's naptime again, which means it's time for another blog post written on the fly! (Cue lots of cartoon dust clouds and "peee-ow" acceleration noises as your heroine's fingers fly on the keyboard.)

I don't know about you, but my pantry is full of all sorts of things that routinely stump me when I open the door (here's looking at you, wasabi powder). Hidden among the cans of beans and glass jars of flours (and the wasabi powder) are various sweeteners that have made their home way home with me over the years, like brown rice syrup, two half-empty (what gives?) bottles of agave nectar, and various shades of brown sugar. I never really know what to do with them and I confess that the "clean eating" brigade actually put me off alternative sweeteners for years.

Enter Shauna Sever's Real Sweet, a cookbook about recipes made with all kinds of natural sugars, from coconut sugar to brown rice syrup, from muscovado sugar to maple syrup, from piloncillo to agave. Sort of like Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain, Shauna's emphasis is on teaching you about the different flavors, textures and properties that these sweeteners impart to cakes, cookies and other confections. It's not a healthy or "clean" baking book, just so that we're very clear from the start. It's a fantastic collection of really delicious treats, impeccably tested, written with humor and geared towards both child-friendly treats and sophisticated desserts. The book is organized around these treat categories, rather than the sweeteners, but there's a good index in the back that allows you to choose a sweetener and then see all the related recipes grouped there.

Shauna, who is my sweet and hilarious friend, has two young children, and clearly knows a thing or two about developing Grade A playground treats. But she doesn't dumb down any of her recipes and the book is filled with neat little fillips that elevate all of the recipes into Truly Special territory. The raspberry yogurt popsicles, for example, require lemon peel and vanilla bean, which make them deeply delicious for big and small alike. Shauna's also such a baking pro that the book is stuffed with all kinds of informational gems about baking that I've applied to other recipes with outstanding results. There are lots of hidden tips that will make you a better baker and a more confident one, too. Shauna even managed to develop two recipes for meringue (one soft, one crisp) and a recipe for confectioner's sugar without processed white sugar. Amazing.

I don't know about you, but it's very rare that I end up making more than a handful of things out of any particular cookbook. With this book, though, I can't seem to stop baking from it. I've made everything from tart blueberry fruit leather (agave syrup) to a soulful orange-vanilla pound cake (made with demerara, the batter beaten so long it resembled a gorgeously tan cloud by the end) to a buttery brittle topped with mixed seeds (brown rice syrup - and a candy thermometer, don't try this without one!) to those aforementioned raspberry yogurt popsicles (again, agave syrup) and I have several more recipes bookmarked to make this month alone. (If you must know: the Banana Butterscotch Cream Pie with evaporated cane juice, the Sunflower Seed Nuggets with coconut sugar and the Cracklin' Maple Popcorn with maple syrup, turbinado sugar, plus some molasses.)

The recipes were easy to follow, worked just as written and produced great results. I especially loved that nothing was too sweet or cloying. Shauna got the balance of flavors just right in everything. Shauna really understands the different flavors that these alternative sweeteners provide, as well as the textural things they can achieve (or not) and the recipes reflect it. She didn't just plug in brown sugar for white in a standard recipe. She really developed a whole slew of new recipes around the flavor of each sweetener.

Though I loved everything I made from Real Sweet, my very favorite is actually worth the price of the book (it's also the only thing I don't have a photo for; apologies!): Chocolate Chip Cookie Brittle. This stuff is...well...insane. You make a thin chocolate chip cookie batter, then spread it out all over a baking sheet. Once it has baked and cooled, it hardens into a thin layer that you break apart into rich, buttery shards that taste like a heavenly mashup between the crisp bits of a chocolate chip cookie and a Skor bar (or any chocolate-covered hard toffee). It's delicious. It's ridiculous. You will not be able to stop eating it. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.

Thanks to Shauna, I no longer have any agave syrup in my pantry at all, but I do plan on never being without turbinado or coconut sugar again. And I love that I now have uses for maple syrup and honey beyond our weekend pancakes or Hugo's breakfast yogurt. Best of all, I'm a better baker because of it. Real Sweet will be on my shelves forever.

2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and sugar together. Don't let the mixture come to a boil. Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl and let cool for 5 minutes. Whisk for 1 minute, until the mixture is thickened and smooth and no longer appears separated. Whisk in the vanilla and salt. Stir in the flour until well incorporated. Stir in half the nuts, if using.

3. Scrape the dough out onto an unlined sheet pan and pat it into a very thin, even layer with your hands. It won't look as if you'll be able to fill the entire pan, but you will; just keep patting and spreading the dough all the way to the edges. Use an offset spatula to give the dough a smooth finish. Sprinkle the chocolate chips and remaining nuts, if using, over the the dough and press them lightly into with your hands.

4. Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through, until light golden brown and slightly firm to the touch all over. Let cool in the pan for 3 minutes. Line a second sheet pan with parchment paper. Flip the slab of brittle onto the paper and then immediately peel off the parchment and invert it right side up onto a cooling rack. Cool completely. Break into pieces. Store in an airtight container for at least 5 days.